Hauksbee, Francis

1. Dates

Born: Colchester (?), c.1666

Died: London, May or June 1713

Dateinfo: Birth Uncertain

Lifespan: 47

2. Father

Occupation: Merchant

Richard Hausbee was a draper in Colchester.

No information on financial status.

3. Nationality

Birth: English

Career: English

Death: English

4. Education

Schooling: No University

No university education.

5. Religion

Affiliation: Anglican

6. Scientific Disciplines

Primary: Physics, Electricity

Physico-Mechanical Experiments on Various Subjects, 1709.

Sustained experimentation of electricity began with Hauksbee. He also performed important experiments on capillary phenomena. Also on the propagation of sound in compressed and rarified air, on freezing of water, and on elastic rebound. He measured specific gravities and refractive indices. He investigated the law of magnetic attraction and the time of fall through air.

7. Means of Support

Primary: Merchant, Art, Scientific Society

Secondary: Schoolmastering, Publishing

Apprenticed in the trade to his older brother, 1678-87.

Ran his own shop, 1687-1703--this appears to mean a retail shop. He was a small merchant.

Guerlac speculates (on the basis of fragmentary evidence) that Hauksbee may have been Boyle's assistant.

Hauksbee emerged out of obscurity at the meeting of the Royal Society on 15 Dec. 1703. He became the Royal Society's paid performer of experiments from that time until his death, though he was never formally the Curator of Experiments. Apparently he had already made himself known to some people as an experimenter. We know that he was giving demonstrations in his shop in 1704 and in 1710 was offering public lectures. He also made and sold instruments--e.g., cupping glasses used in surgery, air pumps, and barometers.

Hauksbee published Physico-Mechanical Experiments himself and sold the copies from his home.

8. Patronage

Types: Scientist, Aristrocrat

The Royal Society--or better, Newton, who stood behind his appointment to the society.

Hauksbee dedicated Physico-Mechanical Experiments to Lord Somers, former President of the Royal Society.

9. Technological Involvement

Type: Instruments

Scientific instruments for physical experiments--an improved air pump (though no one seems able to define precisely what Hauksbee's improvements were), and what was, in effect, the first static electric or frictional electric machine, a glass globe mounted on an axle, and also a primitive electroscope to detect electric charges.

10. Scientific Societies

Membership: Royal Society

He collaborated with Newton on experiments at the Royal Society, and influenced some of Newton's ideas, both with his capillary and with his electrical experiments.

Royal Society, 1705-13.

Sources

1. Duane Roller and Duane H.D. Roller, The Development of the Concept of Electrical Charge (a volume in J.B. Conant, Case Histories in Experimental Science), (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), pp. 17-29. Duane H.D. Roller, "Introduction," to Hauksbee, Physico-Mechanical Experiments on Various Subjects, (New York, 1970). pp. ix- xxix.
2. W.B. Hardy, "Historical Notes upon Surface Energy and Forces of Short Range," Nature, 109 (1922), 375-8.
3. E.C. Millington, "Studies in Capillarity and Cohesion in the Eighteenth Century," Annals of Science, 5 (1945), 352-69.
4. Dictionary of National Biography (repr., London: Oxford University Press, 1949-50) 9, 171. E.G.R. Taylor, Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England, (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 296-7.
5. Henry Guerlac, "Francis Hauksbee: Expérimentateur au profit de Newton," Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, 16 (1963), 113-28.
6. _____, "Sir Isaac and the Ingenious Mr. Hauksbee," in Mélanges Alexandre Koyré, ed. I.B. Cohen and René Taton, (Paris, 1964), 1, 228-53.
7. _____, "Newton's Optical Aether," Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 22 (1967), 45-57.

Compiled by:

Richard S. Westfall

Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Indiana University

Note: the creators of the Galileo Project and this catalogue cannot answer email on geneological questions.